Every morning, I wake to the sounds of dozens of birds and bugs and breezes, frantic and excited for another day of sun and rain. I lift the mosquito net over my head, just enough to peer out the window into Armando’s plot of land, bursting with greens and changing every second as the early light grows and shifts. There’s one tree back there whose trunk is covered in a creeper with round, neon little leaves. The other day I was up to grab my book and spotted a Motmot in that tree, relatively still and silent with its brilliant blue tail hanging nonchalantly toward me. I could hardly contain myself, searching for the binoculars without taking my eyes of that tail, sure that it would fly away just as I opened the case… but it stayed, just hopping up a few branches as I gawked from the open-air bathroom.

Why does nature express itself so creatively, so exuberantly, here in this particular place? Sure, it could simply be a matter of humidity and heat, of eons of evolution and careful conservation efforts in recent years. Who knows, it could even be that some divine being decided to bless these hills and valleys with its most inspired designs. These days, though, I can’t shake the idea from my mind that there’s some sort of magic in the mix. The glitter and flap of iridescent blue butterflies sweeps me into a world where magia becomes possible–even necessary.

This morning we dragged ourselves out into the sunrise, high above Mindo and past where the canopy tours run, to search for some of the thousands of bird species that grace this forest. I had been out once before, alone, and saw dozens of gorgeous species, few of which I could identify. Though everything is enthralling with or without a name, I was happy to have Armando pointing out bird calls and differences between males and females and subspecies along the way. Of course the small lemon tanager males are more brilliant than the females, with blindingly yellow streaks under their jet-black wings; songbird sexes are always relatively easy to tell apart. The toucans are harder. There are not only males and females, but also at least three species that we saw– one with a distinct, red-spotted chest and two that look the same to my untrained eyes. They were chatting and singing to one another across the gravel road, high in the trees but easy to spot, cocking their heads and preening their feathers. Occasionally one would stretch its black wings out, feather tips silhouetted neatly against the sky, and glide silently to another branch. Whether they were chasing each other, joking or teasing or crying longingly for a mate, I am left wondering. How do they choose whom to love? I find it hard to believe it´s simply a matter of the biggest beak or loveliest cackle.

But what do I know about toucan love?

Then there were the quetzals, stunningly sparkling and marine-colored. They are normally scarce and certainly difficult to see perched in camouflage against the canopy, but today we saw at least three pairs, chasing one another and hunting for insects in the wide-open ravines that lead down to the Rio Mindo. I surely would have missed them had I been alone, but Armando patiently pointed out each one and we stood in awe as their red tails flashed in and out of sight. Instead of singing, sometimes they just laugh like hyenas, like they´ve got some secret I´d be a fool to guess at.

¨Qué más quieres ver?¨ asked Armando after we’d marvelled some time over toucans and quetzals, the two most magnificent, ¨exotic¨ birds to my eyes. A hawk, a woodpecker, an eagle?

And just past the next curve, he shushed me over to look up at a branch hanging over the road, dripping with epiphytes: a hawk, silent and serious, glaring over the valley below. He (she?) then starting calling, slowly and softly at first, almost gently, then crescendoing steadily into a wild war cry. As it let out the last deafening pulse, it opened its wings and dropped away around the curve, out of sight.

As the sun finally crept over the canopy and my stomach started growling, I didn’t need to know much more. That this place is perpetually happening, that its life force cycles in every direction, up and through every [damned] mosquito and [steadfast] hawk, every day of the year, doesn´t require that I know about it. The fact that I can, just a bit… magic.

I was sitting, eyes closed, in the lap of a wide, white tree in the pasture far behind Marco´s house. The moon, waxing crescent, had just set behind the wall of forest to our backs, and the stars were sparkling bright as fireflies. In one sense, I was alone with just a backpack and machete. In every other, I was with multitudinous company: one by one, I tried to hone in on each sound in the darkness. Though I recognized none, I knew the raucous calls spoke of grasshoppers, frogs, cicadas, and a haunt of nocturnal insects. There, an owl. Here, a growing swarm of mosquitos trying to poke its way through the shirt I´d tied around my head. My breath, finally calm. Layers upon layers of foreign sound; I could barely hear a thing. Then,

POWWWoooaaaaooo!!!

One single shot. In the half hour I sat there listening, I had almost forgotten why I was there. Marco had been sitting silently, as well, just a hundred meters away in the forest, high up on two logs we´d tied around two trees. From his lookout in the darkness, he was waiting over the feeding grounds of the wanta, a large rodent that only comes out in the darkest hour of night. Oh yes: it all came back to me before the echo of munitions faded into the animal chants of the night. Oh yes: we had arrived around sunset to fix the lookout, re-tying and testing the logs, tracking the wantas´ previous feast of forest fruits, calling back and forth to a wakening owl in the distance. The moon was still high in the sky when darkness set, so we went to fish until the silvery light disappeared. We dug wriggly worms by the stream nearby, hooking them tightly and letting them sink to the mud under dangling grasses. We´d caught about six little barbudas, similar to catfish, before Marco went to chase an armadillo that was digging around the hill we faced. No luck this time…

(…Unlike the time he went wanta hunting last week, when he brought home a fully grown male armadillo in the backpack instead. I was convinced to de-scale, peel, and clean it that night, concentrating on each square inch of skin or shell in order to ignore the stench.)

I digress. By the stream, Marco returned as I held the ad hoc fishing pole in the moonlight, waiting for one more nibble. The night was still young, we already had a bag of fish, and we were still full of energy from the chonta that afternoon (a type of palm fruit that´s orange and savory, boiled and peeled with salt and cup of coffee), so we set off through the jungle to bag more fish in a bigger river.

The sensation of walking at night is dizzying. I mean, walking even on a sidewalk in pure darkness can be harrowing, ¿no es cierto? And, of course, walking through the forest at Opal Creek at night, hurrying with head lamps to find a campsite, is even more disquieting. So this night in the selva amazónica— surrounded by utterly foreign smells and sounds and sensations as I passed through brush and stepped over nurse logs– was quite possibly the most alien experience of my life. On the hunt as we were, I tried to stay alert and aware of all the noises around us, but it was nearly impossible for me to differentiate what Marco knew instantly as a grasshopper or bat. It was all I could do to keep up with him, tread quietly over the sea of leaves and sticks at our feet, and try to not panic as we crossed slippery rivers and searched for wanta along the way. We stopped to fish at a larger, slow bend in the river, keeping our lights off to not frighten the barbudas. Marco called to the monkeys in the distance and huffed deeply to communicate to the little jaguar across the way that we were peaceful. I sat, utterly stupefied, mechanically stashing each fish he caught in a pocket of the backpack. For all my time and attention here, I realized I knew practically nothing of this forest.

At the next stream we were along the edge of the trees again, and I waited in the pasture for a moment as Marco fished. Looking uphill at the sparse tree trunks in the last rays of white light, I imagined I was in the oak savannah of the Willamette Valley. Bald Hill, or Avery Park, or even down around Mount Tamalpais in California. For a few breaths, I ignored the jungle air and incessant chant, and I felt safer, steadier, sturdier– like I could teach Marco something, this time around. Then the aroma of orchids wafted by, I caught a whiff of my jungle sweat, and the vision morphed back.

The moon was falling fast along the horizon, so we started back the way we came. The wanta would be coming out soon to search for food underneath Marco´s lookout post. Along the way we stopped just once as the wavering whistle of nocturnal monkeys approached. In the trees above, they bounded and leapt loudly, stopping at a safe distance to watch us watching them. The size of large cats, they shifted curiously as their beady yellow eyes reflected Marco´s torch. Tan bodies into the trees. The night was full. We trekked on.

That is how I came to be sitting, eyes closed, in the lap of a wide, white tree in the night. After the shot rang the songs of night continued undisturbed, but I was waiting anxiously for Marco to emerge from the forest´s edge. When he finally did, flashlight bouncing along the tips of pasture grass, I peeked around the smooth leg of tree, squinting into the light, and spotted one delicate paw dangling at his side. It was a young one, just three months old according to the fat on her belly, soft and warm and heavy. We were happy, and I congratulated Marco for his long-awaited wanta. On the long walk home, as we stopped suddenly here and there to listen for armadillos in the brush, I reached behind me to feel the its silky fur sticking through a hole in the bottom of the backpack. I wished I could have seen it alive, pawing through the forest floor with its little toes, gnawing on pasos or uvas amid the grasshoppers´ crescendo.

But you know, I was also happy to see it scorched and brushed clean the next day. I was happy to learn how to take its guts out and chop its spine into meaty hunks. Most of all, I was happy to savor each bite of its fried meat, tender and fatty like prime rib, over a pile of boiled plátano and wash it down with fresh warm milk.

Yesterday I went out to swim at sunset and fell into such a pleasant, blissful state of play and being: the waves came consistently, foaming and frothing, eating their way toward me until– the glassy water around me was gobbled up by whitewash. Quick inhale, pull my head under the swell and feel my long hair rip and curl in the storm above. Sometimes my ears would whirr and click as the pressure instantly shifted around my neck, so delicate for an ocean. So delicate. Pop back to the air, where the world had become a cacophony of crackles and fizz, patches of lacy white foam dancing between my arms, dissipating into the darkening waters. Look west: golden wisps fading into a deep, dull red just atop the horizon, blanketed in billows and bubbles. A wave approaches, bigger than the last, as the undercurrent rips my toes from the steady sandbank below; the sun disappears behind its crest, bouncing and flying over my head, horribly powerful yet transitory. A quick shadow from a frigate bird shoots overhead, the moon hangs waxing crescent, and I notice that my skin looks darker, almost brown, skimming the sherbet foam. Darkness is falling, cliffs fading to café. I fall back, paddle widely between the crashes, over and over and over I will never leave.